Tito Zanibóni, a former Socialist (but Fash-curious) deputy is arrested for attempting to assassinate Mussolini. He’d rented a hotel room in Rome overlooking the balcony from which The Duck was scheduled to give a speech, but police arrest him after a tip-off. Mussolini orders the dissolution of the Unitarian Socialist Party to which Zanibóni belonged and the closure of its newspaper, and is going after Masonic lodges, ostensibly to protect them from reprisal by furious Fascists.
It probably doesn’t mean anything, but Mr. M’s speech was to celebrate Armistice Day, which in Italy meant the surrender Austria near the end of the Great War, and Zanibóni’s sniper rifle was the Austrian Steyr-Mannlicher M1895.
Zanibóni’s trial in 1927 (why the delay?) will result in a 25-year sentence, which will be commuted by the king in 1943. He’ll by appointed High Commissioner for the National Purification of Fascism in 1944, but will soon resign because the government failed to give him powers to, you know, nationally purify Fascism.
Biologist and influential racist eugenicist and Albert Wiggam says American women are losing their beauty, which will be followed by their intelligence (the two evidently go together) because stupid, unattractive women are out-breeding them. “If it keeps up, the next generation will be both homely and dumb.”
25-year-old Soprano Mary Lewis joins the Metropolitan Opera, unusually coming from a career in vaudeville, including the Ziegfeld Follies, and silent movies.
Campbell McCarthy, who we are irrelevantly informed is a negro, gets a last-minute reprieve (a postponement) of his hanging in Illinois, but insists on being allowed to eat the last meal anyway (chicken; it doesn’t sound like prisoners have a choice of last meal).
Lucy Dales becomes the first woman mayor of Dunstable in England, elected almost unanimously by the council, on which she has sat since 1908. I say almost unanimously because her father voted against her. “She already has had as much responsibility as a woman should carry.” Dunstable has only just gotten electricity, explaining the light bulb theme you can sort of see – if you squint – at this wooden sculpture of Dales unveiled this very year.
No comments:
Post a Comment